


All The Things That Sigh In The Dark

by Razzaroo



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 10:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21160100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzaroo/pseuds/Razzaroo
Summary: "Something will change: anger or fear will win and Vilkas doesn’t know which would be worse; Kodlak’s patience will run out, which is an uncertainty Vilkas has never had to consider before." There is something to be said about monsters.





	All The Things That Sigh In The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> so during my travels between various ancient video game kink memes, I came across a prompt on the Skyrim kink meme for a male NPC living with the aftermath of an assault. I have since lost the prompt but this has been lingering in my brain for about six months. 
> 
> it's now time to release it into the wild because if I hold on to it any longer, I'll just pick and pick at it until there's nothing left

There is something to be said about monsters.

They populate the edges of the map, the boundaries of the known world, with their teeth and their claws, a thousand eyes watching for a moment of weakness before they close their jaws on unsuspecting prey. They stalk the night with eyes that glow amber and creep in spaces beneath the earth. They’re the things that cry in the dark, and they ruin what they catch; if you are strong and brave, clever and sharp, they’ll never catch you.

But then there’s the ones with human eyes and human teeth, human hands that Vilkas can still feel on his hips, his thighs, his knees, human hands with mud in their creases and nails rimmed with red. They’re human voices in his ear, mocking taunting things, telling him they’d expected more.

_Like mudcrabs,_ one had said, _All bite until you get him on his back._

He wishes he could stop hearing it, all the things they’d said, the things they wanted to do. He wishes that killing them had been the end of it, that Aela’s arrows and her teeth had been enough to put it to rest. He hears them when he’s awake; he sees them when he tries to sleep, sees the flush of their skin and the hunger in their faces, smugness as they pin him down, a mouth curled in a smile as his heart races. They stick under his skin, sharp as thorns, and only dig deeper the more he tries to get away. He wishes it was just thorns.

_Look at the teeth on him,_ another had said, fingers digging into Vilkas’s jaw, one thumb hooked in the corner of his mouth, _You bite, I’ll knock them all out._

He leaves a training dummy in splinters in the yard, retreating to Jorrvaskr when the moons show their faces. Anger is an ugly thing and Vilkas knows his temper has always been the worst part of him, but anger is better than fear; his world now boils down to a coin toss between the two, his whole life frozen until the septim drops.

Something will change: the bruises will fade; anger or fear will win and Vilkas doesn’t know which would be worse; Kodlak’s patience will run out, which is an uncertainty Vilkas has never had to consider before.

There is something to be said about monsters and Vilkas hides himself away from them, from the hands on his skin and voices in his ear, from his own monster that threatens to overtake him if he lets the coin fall too soon. 

The knock on his door makes him twitch. It’s not Tilma, who doesn’t bother knocking now she’s seen it all. He expects Skjor or Kodlak, making sure he hasn’t crumpled into dust or snow, and he has _I don’t need anything _at the ready on the tip of his tongue.

It’s neither of them.

“Vilkas?” That’s Farkas, returned from Solitude, hesitant for the first time in his life. He tests the door, “Skjor told me what happened.”

Vilkas wants to see him; he wants to push him away. He wants Farkas to know nothing; he wants nothing more than to confide in him, to lean on him, and wonders how much his brother already knows, how much has already been said. He watches the door, knowing that Farkas will wait for as long as it takes, before looking at the rope burns on his wrists. There isn’t much that he trusts, but he does trust Farkas, who would never push him away and never reduce him down to one night, a handful of ugly hours in the dark.

He stands and lets his brother in.

Farkas looks almost too solid, too real, standing in the doorway. He waits until Vilkas steps aside before he comes into the room, keeping himself at a distance, trying not to crowd too soon. He’s shed his armour and his sword; his shirt doesn’t fit him properly, with lopsided seams, and he’s just entirely too unused to being without armour for anything to sit right on his shoulders. Vilkas pulls on his sleeves, his collar, trying to hide the marks left on him and Farkas fidgets, unsure of himself in his own brother’s space.

“Skjor told me,” he repeats and pauses, “You’ve looked better.”

“Felt better,” Vilkas says. He’s unravelling, seam by seam, and he fears that seeing Farkas could make it worse; they’re supposed to be mirrors of each other and, until now, nothing has ever happened to Vilkas that hasn’t also happened to Farkas.

“I can go.” Farkas looks ready to step back already, “I just wanted to see…”

He trails off and Vilkas fills in the blank on his own: _to see how bad it is, _as if it needed confirmation; _to see if you were really still alive, _as if he hadn’t spat the word into Skjor’s face; _to see if I can do anything, _because Farkas has always been the optimistic one.

“You can stay,” he says, and there’s relief in his brother’s face, “Who else would you talk to?”

He lets Farkas touch him then, allows him to turn his wrists to see the burns, tilting his face to examine the bruise on his jaw.

“You wanna talk about it?” Farkas asks, tugging Vilkas’s sleeves down again.

Ropes. A hand rough in his hair, his cheek pressed against the scraping ground. _We’ll cut your throat when we’re done. _Vilkas pulls back and away.

“Not now,” he says, almost regretting opening that door. He wants Farkas to stop looking at him like that, like he doesn’t know how to do it right anymore.

Another thick silence settles between them and Farkas finally looks away, turning his attention to Vilkas’s cluttered bookshelf. Vilkas sits on his bed, his spine too rigid, the rest of him all angles; he feels like he’s trying, and failing, to mould himself back into his past self. At least with Farkas here, he has a template to follow, an idea of what his face had looked like before _they’d _marked it, a guide to how things had been before.

“Thought you didn’t read,” he says when Farkas finds what he’s looking for and takes it off the shelf.

“Sometimes I do,” Farkas says, “Gotta try and keep up with you.”

He joins Vilkas, sits shoulder to shoulder with him, an old familiar thing that they’ve always done when they’ve been separated. He opens his book across his knees and says nothing when Vilkas leans against him, presses against the warmth of him. Before, they’d have talked, but now Vilkas holds back, keeping his little fears clogged in his throat so he doesn’t infect Farkas with his own battering.

“There’s vampires near Solitude,” Farkas says when Vilkas is settled. He frowns and circles a spot on the map, age spotted and creased in the book, “Or nearer Solitude than anywhere else.”

“You actually saw one?”

“Wouldn’t know if I did.”

Vilkas stays quiet as Farkas flips through the book, soft sound of vellum on vellum. Days of running on snatches of sleep are starting to catch up to him, almost enough to let him think that the only thing that’s changed is who’s holding the book, grasping for some level of normality even though he can tell that Farkas is paying far more attention to him than to the book. It’s not a fix, and things are far from all right; there’s still the rest of the night to come, with the dreams that are more memory, and tomorrow will bring something that will open everything and make it raw again. For now, he savours that there’s still space left in him for trust and safety, despite how he’d lashed out at everyone else trying to offer it.

“Vilkas.”

“Hm.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t with you.”

_You should have been, _Vilkas wants to say, spite and anger rearing an ugly head in his chest. He closes his eyes and shuts it in, along with everything else.

“You’re here now,” he says, “and you don’t have to be.”

“You’re my brother. Where else would I be?”

There are a multitude of answers but Vilkas accepts this one. If there’s one part of his identity that hasn’t taken a hit, that hasn’t been battered and cracked, it’s his relationship with Farkas. When morning comes, and he can’t say _which_ morning, he’ll pick himself up from there, start himself anew. He’s Farkas’s brother first, and then Jorrvaskr’s ward, then Companion, then werewolf. One day, somewhere far away, he’ll be able to stitch those all together and become _Vilkas _again.

For now, he shelters himself against Farkas’s side, pretends that it’s tiredness that makes his eyes prickle and not tears. He breathes in and out again, careful and measured. The monsters retreat, slithering back into their own skins, back to the edges of the world, back into the pages of old books; the world starts moving, sluggish, and, for a moment, he can try to think it feels right.


End file.
